Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Thursday, January 31, 2013

Civil War and State Sponsored Fundamentalism

On the 25th of January this year a beguiling article was published
in Ynet News (an Israeli website). It was titled "Lapid, prevent civil war”.

It placed the onus for Israel’s future
on a secular public that has grown tired of betrayal, is fed up with being
abused.There is a well loved, perhaps
too well loved word in Hebrew, “Friar”.Its meaning is not the portly gentleman with balding pate but a sucker,
an easy target, a fool. I will return to this word later. The Israeli public
has become used to being told that its history is myth, its religion is
nonsense and its rights mortgaged to groups that despise us and whose leaders
disrespect us at every turn.So it is
hardly surprising that Israel’s secular population are substantially alienated
from their natural faith and grown cynical with the inflated costs they are
expected to pay for the contempt they in turn receive as payment from their
ultra-orthodox (referred to as ‘Haredi’ from here on in) and Arab brothers and
sisters.

But this article is not about our
Arab fellow citizens.It is about the
Haredi population of Israel.According to the dictionary the Haredi are: “any of several sects of Orthodox Judaism that
reject modern secular culture and many of whom do not recognize the spiritual
authority of the modern state of Israel.”

The author of this article is a
Haredi history teacher so it is instructive that he fails to recognise the
condescension in his tone of writing.‘Instructive’
because history is the study of the past and is discouraged by the Torah as a
distraction.

The particularistic approach to any ideological position is the
signature style of any culturally hegemonic world-view. We can and should all live within
societies that do not demand absolute cultural conformity. But in authoritarian
societies such as those that exist throughout the Muslim world the state exists
to demand obedience to a singular approach, to a vortex of ever increasing
density of regulation that inexorably draws us in whether we desire it, or not;
and if not, then into ever greater conflict with the institutions of the State.

Modern Israel has been battling against
this state sponsored fundamentalism since its beginning.

Haredi Judaism came into being within
the pressurised environment of the ghetto. The ghetto usually protected the
community from antisemitic assault but created a barrier between those forced
to live separately and the rest of society. The Enlightenment created strains within
this ghettoised existence as contact with the outside world increased and many people
left its prison-like confines. Amos Elon viewed the Enlightenment as liberation
from “the inability to think for oneself”. But while it removed the ritual from society,
in its place the Enlightenment elevated the intellect above God.It is hardly surprising then that the
reaction to the Enlightenment was one of fear and towards the ‘substantiation’
of a narrow, racially based nationalism that defined the group by its exclusion
of others.The Haredi community, created
in rejection and powerlessness,grew
out of the fear that integration could only be achieved by assimilation; that
‘liberation’ from the ghetto would result in the dissolution of the authentic
and faithful remnant.The Haredi (plural
Haredim) are neither a cohesive nor a homogeneous group.In Israel
they are split between Agudat Israel
which, co-operates with the state, and Eda Haredit which, is fiercely opposed to
having any contact with the state.

Prior to the Shoah, a life of religious
study was confined to a minute number of exceptional individuals who were privately
sponsored by wealthy members of society or private charity. The post Shoah, militantly
secular, State of Israel viewed nourishing the remnant of European Jewry as a
sacred duty.It exempted a group of
religious scholars from compulsory military service, on condition that they
pursue their studies (in 1948 this exemption was for 400 men). Torato Emunato
(Torah study is his occupation) rapidly became an inalienable right, but in
response to this abuse of process, the non-Haredi community also became
corrupted.There has never been a
requirement for objective testing in order to measure suitability for a life of
intense study.Today, many women use a
spurious religious identity to avoid the draft and many of the remaining men
decide that to enlist in the army, to have ones freedom ‘stolen,’ is an
unnecessary imposition on their freedom to choose. They regard national service
as the ultimate act of self-abuse; the behaviour of a ‘friar’.

Military conscription was once viewed
as the great leveller that equalised the worker and the industrialist.Only in deciding budget allocations and the
timing for armed conflict was civilian input to military strategy necessary.The politicisation of the Army has created unacceptable
pressures that have had a huge and negative impact on the ability of the armed
forces to confront an aggressor.

And so I return to what the
author of the article wrote.

Mr Ohad Shaked wrote that the
issue of drafting yeshiva boys “may exacerbate the religious-secular divide in Israel and lead
to civil war”. Mr Shaked places the responsibility for creating the conditions
under which civil war will either erupt or, with ‘wisdom’ (coercion), be
prevented, on the secular politician a total of four times.

I am going to propose something
else. The Status Quo was an agreement under which David Ben-Gurion agreed to
provide assurances that the state would not apply coercive pressure on any
sector of the diverse public. That was in 1947.Basing exemption on equal grounds for all permanent residents of the
State does not imply universal exemption for any segment of the population. In
fact, secular residents do not have an automatic right to refuse national
service. Postponement is allowed for exceptional students whose contribution to
the state would be better served if they were permitted to complete their area
of study. And then they serve their full national service plus additional time
in their countries defence.

In 1948, the number of yeshiva students who
received a draft deferral was 400, in 2011 it was 71,000.A deferral almost always becomes an
exemption.The number of yeshiva
students performing civilian service in 2011 was 1,080.

In order to return us to the
status quo ante all discriminatory tax exemptions and subsidies (for those that
refuse to serve) must be cancelled.The
reins of control over who are exempted and who receives deferment from national
service must be returned to military control. The criteria for deferral or
exemption must be agreed by government and applied universally.All those people not engaged in military
service must complete an equal period of national service (and reserve duty) regardless
of identity.

That they do not risk their life
for their nation does not make them less worthy. If they have to clean
waterways, dig ditches, learn bricklaying and build hospitals; all people should
contribute and if they are unwilling to do so then the states citizens should not
pay for their contemptuously expressed unwillingness to contribute to the
national endeavour.

There are many clichés that are
being thrown around in this ongoing debate, amongst them ‘the desire to create
an equal sharing of the burden’ and ‘a need to reduce inequality’. But a life
of study without human engagement is a wasted life and no deity would expect
it. It is experiencing a life of toil that brings us towards god. Beryl Wajsman
(President at the Institute for Public Affairs in Montreal, Canada)
has a phrase: “suffocating self-absorption” and that is the best description I
can provide for the “ungracious modernity” that has justified this post-modern
individuality and contempt for national endeavour. Fear of assimilation or dissociation, of contamination
or of suffocation, none of these excuses a refusal to be part of the nation
that feeds us, clothes us and protects us.Neither prayer nor apathy provides justification for not contributing
towards national service.

It is time the government set
guidelines for all Israeli’s and left the army to enforcing the law.After that, those that refuse do not need to
be paid by the state for their principled stand.

The threat of civil war is not
just a violation of allegiance to the state; it is an offence against God. Look at the obscenity that is Civil War Syria. Warnings
(threats) are the desperate but very blunt instrument of the demagogue.Their contribution
to the public debate is only of value in highlighting why we must implement the
universal draft without political interference and in haste.